Broward County Humane Society Offers Puppy Yoga Sessions for Animal-Assisted Wellness

The Humane Society of Broward County ran its Puppy Yoga session, also listed under the name Mindful Paws, on Saturday, March 14 at its Fort Lauderdale shelter on Griffin Road. The 60-minute class, priced at $30 per person and capped at 30 participants, forms part of the organization's newly launched Animal-Assisted Wellness program.

The format is exactly what it sounds like if you've been in the doga space for any length of time: participants flow through gentle yoga poses while adoptable puppies from the shelter's own population roam freely around them. According to the Humane Society's event listing, those puppies offer "snuggles, kisses, and playful interactions" throughout the session, which runs from 9:00 to 10:00 AM.

What separates this from a straightforward yoga class with dogs present is the dual purpose baked into the structure. The shelter describes the sessions as promoting stress relief and connection among participants while simultaneously serving a practical animal-welfare function: socializing the puppies and raising awareness for pet adoption. Every dog in the room is adoptable, which gives the whole thing a weight that a standard studio class doesn't carry.

The program is branded under the Animal-Assisted Wellness umbrella, which the Humane Society describes in its registration materials as designed to "harness the healing power of the human-animal bond to support and restore the mind, body, and spirit." The Mindful Paws label appears on some of the online registration copy as an associated program or session identifier alongside the Puppy Yoga heading.

The session took place at the Humane Society of Broward County's facility at 2070 Griffin Road, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312. The organization can be reached at 954-989-3977 for information about upcoming dates.

Whether the March 14 class was a one-off launch event or the first in a recurring series hasn't been confirmed, but the registration infrastructure already in place suggests the organization intends to schedule additional sessions. For anyone in the South Florida doga community who missed yesterday's class, it's worth calling the shelter directly to ask about the next available date.